Can Harvard's alumni save it from Trump?
Harvard has some of the wealthiest and most prominent alumni of any university in the world. They're already playing a key role in responding to President Donald Trump's pressure campaign.
Some are Supreme Court justices. Others are former presidents. More are business tycoons, famous actors and high-powered lawyers.
Harvard University's alumni – nearly half a million strong – include some of the most powerful and wealthy people in the United States. Donations to their alma mater amount to hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Since President Donald Trump began targeting the Ivy League campus as part of a pressure campaign to reform American colleges, Harvard has turned to the public and financial support of its alumni more than ever.
In mid-April, the Trump administration froze more than $2.2 billion in federal funding at the school, alleging its administrators had violated civil rights laws because they hadn't taken steps to curb antisemitism.
Then, in early May, the president threatened to rescind the university's tax-exempt status, which could cost the school hundreds of millions, by some estimates. A few weeks later, the Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard's ability to enroll international students, many of whom conduct important research and tend to bring in more tuition dollars than domestic students. A federal judge has indefinitely paused that move.
The Trump administration's actions have forced the school, one of the wealthiest institutions in the world, to consider for the first time how to cut costs in major ways. Harvard's president, Alan Garber – who is Jewish and has committed to curbing antisemitic discrimination on campus – took a voluntary 25% pay cut. Harvard borrowed $750 million, far less than the federal funding that's been frozen.
As a new form of federal oversight has thrown the school into turmoil, its former students have sprung into action. When Garber first pledged to challenge Trump, alumni donations surged. Nearly 4,000 online gifts totaling $1.14 million were recorded in the 48 hours after Harvard filed its initial lawsuit against the Trump administration, according to the Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper.
Yet it's unclear whether alumni donations can fill the massive financial vacuum created by the federal government's retreat, said Allison Wu, a graduate of Harvard Business School and a cofounder of the alumni group the 1636 Forum. Though gifts in the hundreds of millions aren't unheard of at Harvard, its largest alumni donation in 2015 was $400 million, a fraction of the funding the school is looking to recover.
"No one has ever given at that level to Harvard," she said.
Thousands of alumni come together
The breadth of Harvard's alumni base was especially evident in a meeting of thousands of former students last week.
The purpose of the virtual gathering, which included prominent Harvard graduates like Maura Healey, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, and Antonio Delgado, the Democratic lieutenant governor of New York, was to "mobilize against the federal attacks on Harvard." It was organized by Crimson Courage, a nonpartisan group of alumni that formed recently to support academic freedom at Harvard.
Lisa Paige, one of Crimson Courage's organizers, said alumni are drafting a friend-of-the-court brief in support of one of Harvard's lawsuits against the White House.
"Harvard alumni are certainly not aligned on every cause," said Paige, who graduated from the university in 1980. "However, we have come together across our differences to fight for a common cause, which is academic freedom."
Zachary Schermele is an education reporter for Paste BN. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.